Connections Newsletter Archive

This issue of Connections explores confirmation bias and the role it plays in our decision-making process. We interviewed professor Jason Ohler who says, “confirmation bias is fake news’ best friend.” We also introduce our new CML Fellow and Affiliate Michele Johnsen. Note correction: the famous bias study cited as a resource was authored by Albert Hastorf and Hadley Cantril.

Should we place hope in technology for solving some of the problems technology helped create? Maybe. One approach worth looking at is BlockChain (distributed ledger technology) which might help to solve the riddle of where information originates, and how it morphs and proliferates. CML interviewed Ian O’Byrne, internationally recognized educator and researcher, on the topic of BlockChain technology and its connections to media literacy.

Part 2 of our look at the similarities and overlap of Media AND Information Literacy. This issue includes three interviews with librarians representing public libraries, maker spaces, and higher education who offer first-hand accounts of how libraries and librarians are reinventing themselves to meet the varied needs of today’s learners. Read the interviews with Susan Broman, LA Public Library; Mya Stark, LA Maker Space, and Spencer Brayton, Blackburn College, IL.

This issue highlights the close relationship of the fields of media literacy and information literacy. Although media literacy and information literacy are two separate fields of practice and research, the intersections and the overlaps between the fields continue to strengthen and grow as both fields evolve. UNESCO has long encouraged both fields to align and work together through support of its Media and Information Literacy (MIL) program, and has sponsored meetings and declarations, conferences and events that focus on the combined fields. UNESCO’s formation of the Global Alliance for Partnerships in Media and Information Literacy (GAPMIL) serves as an organizing network with the goal of advancing the fields. We include an interview with Dr. Lesley Farmer, currently a Professor at California State University Long Beach, and a long-time practitioner of both information and media literacy. We are pleased to add this interview with Lesley Farmer to CML’s Voices of Media Literacy project.

This issue of Connections looks at how technology and new data are changing the narrative around sports and media, and how that changes our experience as consumers and participants. Sports provide an excellent opportunity to not only learn people skills and health information, but they offer excellent arenas for math and science and algorithmic thinking – and of course, media literacy. And this includes sports cars, too. We have an interview with Wil Cashen, Tesla Foundation.

The boundaries of classrooms are beginning to soften; students’ prior knowledge is more likely to be acknowledged and honored; the need to prepare students for lifelong learning – and to meet them where they are – all are indicative of a movement towards the type of pedagogy that media literacy fosters and delivers. This issue includes interviews with education entrepreneurs from: School on Wheels, Los Angeles; Ace Preparatory Academy, Indiannapolis; Da Vinci Charter Schools, Southern California. We are pleased to report that NAMLE has renamed its Meritorious Service Award in honor of Elizabeth Thoman. The award is "to be given to individuals or projects that have significantly contributed to the growth and quality of the field of media literacy."

This issue pays tribute to the leadership and vision of Elizabeth Thoman, CML Founder and media literacy pioneer. Media literacy collegues expressed their gratitude for Thoman’s courage and commitment to the field of media literacy, and expressed optimism in building upon her vision and legacy. Included is an introduction by Ann McMullen on leadership, and reflections by Dr. Henry Jenkins, University of Southern California (USC), and Dr. Bobbie Eisenstock, California State University, Northridge (CSUN). MediaLit Moments activity is based upon Elizabeth Thoman's "feminist currency."

This issue continues our discussion of the power shift in the media ecosystem, and what it means to be a citizen in a digital age. CML interviewed two digital literacy advocates – Kimberly Brodie, Founder/CEO of The Digital Peace Project, and Alan Simpson from iKeepSafe.

CML is sad to inform our readers of the death of Elizabeth Thoman. Thoman was a pioneer and visionary who founded the Center for Media Literacy in 1989.

This issue focuses on the 2016 presidential election, where technology is going and the challenges that we face in teaching about it. CML interviewed two media literacy advocates – Stephen Balkam from Family Online Safety Institute and Tara O’Gorman, a teacher from a media literacy magnet school in New York. Also includes resources and MediaLit Moments Activity on Fake News. This is Part 1 of a series on Citizenship in the Digital Age.

This month we continue to explore Education and The Creative Economy by featuring exciting initiatives being undertaken in Australia, where media literacy is now embedded in the national curriculum through media arts, and where the Australian government has prioritized supporting and growing the creative economy. CML interviewed two Australian education/media literacy leaders, one who works in higher education – Michael Dezuanni -- and the other in secondary education, Roger Dunscombe.